


That damn hair

by morcabre



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Humor, Long Hair, M/M, Translation of my own work, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-07 02:59:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3158699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morcabre/pseuds/morcabre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vimes hadn't seen the patrician for a long time. It was probably his mistake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That damn hair

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ewela1130](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ewela1130/gifts).
  * A translation of [Эти чертовы волосы](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3135164) by [morcabre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/morcabre/pseuds/morcabre). 



> Many thanks to amazing [TriumphShouts](http://archiveofourown.org/users/TriumphShouts/pseuds/TriumphShouts) for beta-reading this story

It's been a long time since he was in the Oblong office. Vimes had been to Uberwald and then taken a holiday*, less from work (though the city was surprisingly quite) and more from the Palace and the Patrician. Vimes was pleasantly surprised that Vetinari understood the intention and all this time obediently remained as silent as his hated mimes. But yesterday Carrot had come to his office and handed him a note from Vetinari in which the Patrician insisted on a meeting. So now Vimes slowly but inevitably approached the Palace. He delayed the moment when he had to actually walk in the office and look the Patrician in the eyes as much he could. He was so desperate that he even bought and ate Dibbler's sausage slowly** and while loitering around the cart. Unfortunately, any means of evasion sooner or later had to come to an end. Vimes nodded to guards standing on watch, muttered something unintelligible to Drummknot who said “Oh, you haven't been here for a long time, Commander” and finally entered the room. Without raising his eyes from the floor he approached the Patrician's table and finally had to look at Vetinari. 

The Commander froze in astonishment and exhaled, it seems, very loudly. No, Vetinari had not been kidnapped by aliens from other words and nothing particularly horrific*** happened to him, nor had he been replaced by anyone during Vimes' absence, but something was deeply wrong. His hair that was short and trimmed neatly before had grown impossibly long and now fell to his chin. Vimes couldn't look away.

Meanwhile the Patrician finished writing, put down his quill and looked at Vimes.

“It seems you haven't been here for a while, Commander.”

His locks shook from his movement. Vimes swallowed.

“Vimes?”

“Eh,” Vimes said.

The Patrician blinked in surprise.

“Are you all right?”

“Hmmm,” the Commander replied.

Vetinari's cheek twitched. He lifted his hand and tucked away a lock of hair that fell on his face. Vimes felt an irresistible desire to take up a handful of these locks and pull them till he hears an angry hiss and can drown it with his own lips. 

“Vimes,” the Patrician said a bit more sharply this time. “The report.”

Sam blinked and tried to focus. The report. He had been thinking about what he was going to say on his way here.

“Argh” the Commander reported the situation in the city.

The Patrician frowned. Oh, now Vimes had a problem. He looked away from Vetinari's face and those damn locks with superhuman effort of will and set his gaze on a familiar, cozy place on the wall. 

“Ahem,” he cleared his throat and began his report. The universe swayed and returned to its place again. 

But still something had changed. He couldn't stop thinking of that black and impossibly long hair. One particular lock, the one that was constantly falling on Vetinari's face, stuck in his mind so hard that he saw it in his dreams. Once in the night when he was patrolling and met a woman of the oldest profession with – given her job – surprisingly short and jet black hair that hid her face in a such familiar fashion, for a moment he felt an urge to go on the winding and barely visible path of Things That Are Discussed in a Whisper**** from a thoroughly familiar and foot worn path of exemplary father and husband. 

“Oh gods,” Vimes muttered in a barely audible voice and hurried home, arriving the earliest he ever had during his family life.

He didn't even want to think what their weekly meetings now looked like. He went to Vetinari's office looking exclusively upwards***** and went out as fast as he could. 

Of course, due to certain and unprovable laws of nature known only to minority it couldn't last forever. Vimes was reporting to the Patrician and carefully not looking at him when he heard a terrible crash of broken window glass. Before the Commander realized what happened, Vetinari was lying on the floor and Vimes was lying on Vetinari. Somewhere both very close and impossibly far from them the crossbow bolt hit the floor of the Oblong Office. Before the Commander could get out of here, he grabbed Vetinari's damn hair, pulled him closer and kissed him ferociously. But due to the same laws and despite wishes of certain human beings this moment also couldn't last forever. Vimes let go of Vetinari. The Patrician looked at him with a look of a man who was halfway through climbing the Mountain of Perfect Bewilderment. Vimes blushed brightly.

“It's all your damn hair,” he muttered defensively.

The Patrician reached the top of the mountain, put the ladder there and climbed a little higher.

“I couldn't imagine,” he said slowly, “that from all I've been doing all this time, this will get you. “

Despite certain laws of nature Vimes managed to blush even more.

“Shut up,” he said and out of a sense of duty or for some other reason he helped the Patrician to carry out this request by kissing him. 

Vetinari smiled in his thoughts and made a note to himself to cancel looking for a new hairdresser.******

___________________________________________________________________________________

* Vimes thought his holiday was pitifully brief - just a month, though Sybil and Carrot both said that it lasted for two months.

** That, given what are we talking about, was surprisingly fast, like in one bite.

*** There were rumors for quite a long time. But no.

**** And usually with a rather rude giggles, or what even worse, accusing grunting.

***** During one of a meetings he even stumbled on the carpet that seemed completely impossible before that. Vimes could've sworn that in that moment Vetinari was laughing in a completely inappropriate and very quite way. He could've seen this unique moment if he dared to lower his gaze. But he didn't.

****** The last one asked for permission to go to his grandmother's funeral. She lived in Genua and turned out to be not so dead as her grandson thought, which was a bit of a shock. Maybe that's why on a road back to Ankh-Morpork he joined a travelling circus and was now making a living by swallowing swords. In a sense, his new job was quite safer, if by safety you mean knowing why, when and under what circumstances you can die.


End file.
